


Study Buddy

by KnifeofIce, zeekubeast



Category: Ookiku Furikabutte | Big Windup!
Genre: Gen, M/M, Medical School AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 10:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnifeofIce/pseuds/KnifeofIce, https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeekubeast/pseuds/zeekubeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abe is having problems studying anatomy out of a book. Fluffy one-shot. Abe is a medical student AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Study Buddy

Abe stared at the page for what felt like hours.   
  
No matter how many times he read over the labels, or how many times he tried to link things together in his head, he couldn’t seem to make it all stick. This was a problem, considering his exam was in a couple of days.

He let out a frustrated sigh, laying his forehead against the lamp-warmed page of his anatomy atlas. Hell, the muscle names were bad enough. Then he had to link what nerves they were supplied by and what blood vessels drained to and from them? This was going to take quite a bit longer for him to sort out.

 It wouldn’t be quite so bad if a bunch of the muscles didn’t all sound the same. That and… if there weren’t so many of them. And then there were nerves and blood supply on top of that.

He lifted his head and took a peek at the clock.

 11:00 p.m.

 He had been sitting there for four hours already, trying to get a grasp of the upper limb. Normally he was much more of a hands-on learner, but of course the labs were closed right now. Although the thought of going into the lab and smelling any worse than he needed to? No thanks. On top of that, he needed to know this stuff cold before the end of the week.

Damn.

 Sports medicine or orthopaedics is what he was pretty sure he wanted to do after school, but that wasn’t happening if his anatomy knowledge wasn’t up to snuff.

He sat up, lifting his glasses with one hand, rubbing his eyes with the other. He scowled at the eruption of colours that played out under his eyelids.  
  
 _I have to understand this stuff tonight, or else I’ll never be prepared to study everything tomorrow for this exam._  
  
He couldn’t go to bed without understanding the upper limb fully.

Okay.

Deep breath.

 Medical school was like a marathon. You just had to keep up with the material because the finish line wasn’t going to be in sight for a while.   
  
A small thud on the desk next to him nearly made him jump out of his skin. A mug of coffee sat steaming there, Mihashi standing over him, smiling softly.  
  
Abe felt a small pang of guilt as he returned the smile.

Mihashi was actually home for the first time tonight in three days after an away series. After making sure he was feeling okay and his arm was properly stretched and iced, Abe had had to apologize and come to the office to study.

 Even though he was only a room away, it pained him to know his partner was going to climb into a cold, empty bed. It unfortunately happened almost every time he was home, nowadays.   
  
“Thanks, Ren,” he said gratefully, taking a sip right away.   
  
“I thought you might need it,” Mihashi replied quietly. “How’s it going?”   
  
If looks could kill, Abe was pretty sure his textbook would be set aflame at the scowl he had given it.  
  
“Why don’t you p-practice on me?” Mihashi suggested.  
  
Abe looked up at the other, understanding dawning on his face. Of course! How did he not even think of that? It was a lot easier for him to learn these things when he had something three-dimensional to touch and feel and well… How much more three-dimensional could he get than his partner?

 He would have to work fast though, he thought, glancing at the clock again. Mihashi had practice tomorrow and he had to get some sleep soon.   
  
“If you’re willing. Take your shirt off and sit,” he said, patting a hand to his thighs.

 Mihashi nodded, easily shedding his shirt, revealing how much tone he had acquired since starting in the semi-pro leagues, and sat down in Abe’s lap.

Abe marvelled at how easy it was to see many of the muscles separate from each other. Although he had to have an anatomist’s knowledge of them, Abe couldn’t help but regard Mihashi’s muscles with an artist’s perspective. They each had been carefully built through years of off-season training and tens of thousands of pitches. In the privacy of his mind he couldn’t help but feel a little pride over them.

Abe pressed a quick kiss on the back of Mihashi’s neck as he got comfortable. He still couldn’t believe he had never considered asking Mihashi to help him study. It was an excuse to spend time together while still being productive, after all. Maybe they could turn this into a regular thing.  
  
“Okay,” Abe began, taking a peek over Mihashi’s shoulder at the textbook. “Rotator cuff. SITS muscles. Supraspinatus, Infraspinatus, teres minor, subscapularis,” he recited aloud, using a thumb and forefinger to frame each muscle that he could reach.

“Innervation: suprascapular for the first two, axillary nerve for teres minor, upper and lower subscapular nerves for subscapularis,” he continued, tracing the imaginary courses of each nerve as he said them aloud.   
  
He felt movement in his lap and looked up to see Mihashi shuddering—trying to suppress a laugh.   
  
“Sorry.” He had been focused on trying to imagine how his diagram looked in his mind’s eye while touching the other, not really considering how ticklish Mihashi could be.

Abe began pressing and feeling around his shoulder, looking for one specific spot. Mihashi relaxed almost instantly into his touch, Abe noted with a small smile. It must have felt a lot like when he would massage Mihashi’s shoulder for him after a particularly tough practice.

"I’m glad I can help you…" he said softly.

"I appreciate it," Abe replied. It was nice just being in each other’s company. “It’s a pain in the neck trying to figure this out on just paper.”

“Y-you mean,” Mihashi said with a slight laugh. “A pain in the shoulder?”

Abe chuckled at the bad joke, rolling his eyes a bit, continuing to search as he rubbed his hands over Mihashi’s skin. He found it, and kept a finger pressed into one particular spot on his shoulder, glancing at the textbook again.

“And if someone stabbed you  _here_ , you wouldn’t be able to lift your arm like this,” he said as he demonstrated by lifting Mihashi’s arm out and up, away from his body.   
  
Abe could feel the other tense up. It… did sound strange.  
  
“That’s how the questions are asked—‘What would happen if this nerve was cut, or this blood vessel was occluded’ and stabbing is the easiest way they make up the question,” he explained, hoping that would ease the other up.

It didn’t.

 Mihashi looked at Abe over his shoulder, eyes wide.   
  
“Well here, if you got grazed here,” he demonstrated by running a finger laterally underneath Mihashi’s arm, “your shoulder blade would pop out a bit if you put both hands against the wall. It would look like a wing.”  
  
At that, Mihashi clamped down both of his arms tight against his sides, curling in on himself. His eyes darted nervously, as though someone (Abe) might come at him with a knife to demonstrate.

“I-I don’t want a wing,” he said, voice wobbling.  
  
Yeah, Abe supposed explaining that kind of thing to other people might freak them out a bit. He placed his hands over Mihashi’s bare hips, causing him to jump a bit at the suddenness of the contact.   
  
“Calm down, I have to learn all of this stuff so that I can help fix it if someone comes to me with a problem like this,” he explained.

“Right…” Mihashi replied tentatively.

“No one’s coming to stab you, you know?” Abe added, an amused tone to his voice. He thumbed over his hipbones, rubbing little soothing circles into the skin. “I wouldn’t let them.”

“Right.”

 He could practically hear the smile in his voice.

Mihashi relaxed a little bit, sitting up straighter. A soft yawn leaked out of him.  
  
“You can go to bed if you want to.”  
  
Mihashi shook his head. “I want to help.”

 Abe shrugged. It was difficult to change his mind when he was set on something. Abe just hoped he wouldn’t be too tired come morning when he had to wake up for practice.   
  
Abe continued on, tracing out every muscle of the upper limb. As the night wore on, Mihashi was finding it harder and harder to stay alert. His eyes started drooping, shoulders sagging, Abe’s low voice rumbling against his back, lulling him to sleep.   
  
Abe gently pulled the other against him, adjusting Mihashi so that his head lay against his shoulder, arm wrapped around him securely. His other hand held Mihashi’s as he went through the muscles of the hand in his head, not wanting to disturb the other too much.

 Mihashi’s fingertips were still hard with calluses. It was hard not to smile at the unbidden memory of that day behind the bushes, when they had first held hands and Abe had felt the calluses on Mihashi’s cold hand.

It had been years since then, but Abe could remember it as if it were yesterday. He gently squeezed the warm hand with his own, reciting the last name under his breath.   
  
There. He had gone through everything.

 He looked down at Mihashi’s face- his features were soft and his eyes were closed, chest slowly rising and falling. He reached out, gently brushing his knuckles over his partner’s cheekbones, overwhelming fondness welling up in his chest.

Honestly, it was a little unbelievable to him that he could still have moments like this with Mihashi. After high school, their lives had seemed to diverge so much. Abe held in his lap one of the top up-and-coming pitchers in the semi-pro leagues, while he himself was up to his eyeballs in medical school.

 He was thankful every day that Mihashi hadn’t yet gotten sick of him and his need to pay almost undivided attention to his studies. It hadn’t been easy at the start. Conflicting work and sleep schedules had reduced the hours they got to spend with each other to mere gasps, and it hadn’t been just once or twice that they had to forgo a date night because of those schedules. Abe had known this would be rough, of course. But it wasn’t until he actually got there that he realised  _how_  rough.

However, Mihashi’s patience and care for him eased the stress immensely. They both wanted -  _decided_  - to be together and tried their best to make it work. Their relationship had come a long way from their first day as a battery back in high school, and Abe was going to try his damnedest not to mess it up.   
  
He took another glance at the clock. 2:00 a.m.

He reached over to his desk lamp and turned it on its lower setting, reaching for his glasses next and folding them up on the desk. Keeping Mihashi’s upper body secure against him, he tucked his other arm under the other’s gangly legs and stood up, carrying Mihashi next door to their bedroom.

He wondered how they could hold out for another three years like this. Mihashi sighed against his chest in his sleep. A smile crept over Abe’s face and he sighed too.

He hoped they would. He really did.


End file.
